One could almost fancy that the dumb brute comprehended the question facetiously put; at the words elevating its head, giving a wallop or two with its long ears, and mending the pace.
“It be good three mile to go yet,” rejoined the woman. “Just that frae the cross roads—a bit forrard.”
“Well, Winny; us ought to get theer by seven o’ the clock?”
“So us ought, if nothin’ stop we,” and she cast an anxious glance along the road ahead.
“Don’t think theer be much danger o’ gettin’ stopt now. The Governor o’ Glo’ster sayed when’s we got well on maybe we’d meet some o’ the Bristol sodgers patrollin’ about. Weesh we did. ’Tain’t noways comfortable travellin’, all o’ the time in fear o’ being pulled up and knocked about by them Cavalières. Ha! ha! If that party we passed at Berkeley cud a’ seed through my wooden leg, ’tain’t likely I’d be stumpin’ along here?”
“True. But ’tain’t wise to cry safe till one be sure o’ it. Ye know they told us in Glo’ster that the King’s dragoneers ha’ it all their own way in the country places; him’s they call Prince Roopert, goin’ about like a ragin’ lion, runnin’ people through, an’ shootin’ ’em down wi’ pistols as if they were no better than dogs. It’s a big risk us be runnin’, Jack!”
“Right you bees, theer. But then—the reward, Winny! If us only get safe inside, it ought be worth mor’n the profits on a twelvemonth o’ cadgin’. Don’t ye think ’twill?”
“Coorse I do.”
She spoke in all sincerity. Whatever the money reward Jerky Jack was looking forward to, the woman had another in view, also contingent on their safe arrival inside the city,—one she thought worth far more than money. For there she would, or should, meet a man she had not seen for months, though ardently longing to see him. Scarce necessary to say, Rob Wilde was the individual, when it was known that the erst deer-stealer of Dean Forest was now a soldier—first sergeant of a troop forming part of the force then garrisoning Bristol.
“Yee-up, Jinkum?” cried Jack, encouraged by his sister’s words, at the same time conscious as she of the danger alluded to, and the probability of their yet encountering obstruction. It was just after the capture of Cirencester by Prince Rupert; a massacre, sparing neither man nor woman, friend nor foe; they who survived it having been carried, or rather dragged, off to Oxford in triumphal train, a feast for the eyes of the King. To meet it, he, with his entourage of courtiers and sycophants, sallied forth from the city of colleges—but not of education or manners—supreme capital of conceit and snobbery, almost as much then as now. They were met miles out, coming from Witney, by hundreds of half-naked people, shivering in the chill frost of a winter’s day, weary and footsore, covered with mud from the roads they had been driven over as cattle to market!